Unhinged Professor Rob Gagnon Claims Gay Men Are Only ‘Half Male’

Rob Gagnon is the man that some on the Religious Right consider their foremost intellectual heavyweight. This is very funny because Rob Gagnon is simply one of those rare Fundamentalists who can string twelve words together coherently, and thus views this as a license to write 4,000 word screeds when only a hundred will do. Box Turtle Bulletin has a lot of fun messing with him, and they note frequently that, man, he likes to hear himself talk. He considers himself a theologian of the first order, and people like Porno Pete believe that myth so strongly that they declare that he’s the one person the gay rights lobby is so scared of that they won’t debate him.

Riiiiiiiiiiight. For the most part, the legend of Rob Gagnon’s intellectual gifts is perpetuated by Rob Gagnon, and he starts whining when people don’t recognize how smart Rob Gagnon is. Here’s how Jim Burroway puts it:

Gagnon really hates it when nobody recognizes him as “the world’s leading authority.” When Gagnon thinks somebody somewhere on the planet hasn’t discovered his obviously superior scholarship and omniprescient insights, he runs to the keyboard to pound out another unreadable tome to demand the world’s awe. Two years ago, when BTB’s Timothy Kincaid dared to question what he saw as Gagnon’s “unorthodox approach to doctrine,” Gagnon responded with a 3-page rant, followed by a 15-page rant. When that didn’t provoke Kincaid to fall on his knees and beg Gagnon’s forgiveness for failing to see his utter genius, Gagnon responded with a two parter — at 5 pages and 19 pages respectively. When that failed to impress, Gagnon kept going, but we stopped counting the pages. Don’t worry, Gagnon didn’t. He compiled them all into one big file that topped out at 57 pages by the time we were done.

All of this was over a handful of blog posts.

Sounds like a lonely existence.

I bring this up because he’s at it again, this time talking at us in his bow-tie (mark of an extremely smart guy, you see, and you should know that Rob Gagnon is smart, both his parents told him so) about how gay men are only half-male, because, well, you see:

“You unite sexually with the one you perceive to be your sexual counterpart, your sexual other half,” Gagnon stated. “If you’re a man and unite sexually with another male, you’re basically making a statement that you believe your maleness is only half intact, needing to be supplemented by a sexual union with another man in order to make you a whole male.”

Oh, Robert. I assure you I am fully male. Come up with a new convoluted (and completely smart, we promise, you’re smart, Rob, so smart) reason why your bigotry is reasonable.

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47 Comments

This type of wingnuttery is the homophobe’s equivalent to “Mansplaining”. There needs to be a term for it, but I’m having trouble coming up with one.

Kynthia RosgealJuly 9, 2013 at 11:40 pm -

As a feminist I totally agree with you. The gagger is out of his freaking tree !

Scott RoseJuly 9, 2013 at 5:57 pm -

He has too many prejudices and hang-ups. There are probably sexual areas he wishes he could explore, but he is too much of a bigot and a coward to explore them.

RMcJuly 9, 2013 at 5:59 pm -

Please, that bow tie is more of a man than he will even be.

Paul DouglasJuly 9, 2013 at 6:07 pm -

Gawd, this guy needs to get his head out of his áss and take his meds. Seriously, he’s living in his own self-created theoreality. Delusional.

Wonder what this dude does for fun?

PhilJuly 9, 2013 at 11:36 pm -

Knitting, crocheting, needlepoint?

LouJuly 10, 2013 at 11:32 am -

As a crocheter, I assure you that we all have a lot more fun than this guy’s tiny little mind could imagine.

M.E.N.July 9, 2013 at 6:10 pm -

A colleague of mine was classmates with him at our alma mater, Harvard Divinity School. He, of course, was the ideological minority at this liberal school of religion. My colleague swears that he was the biggest closet case while a young budding self-absorbed talking head.

Paul DouglasJuly 10, 2013 at 10:21 am -

This really is a great example of someone taking iron-age “Buybull Truths” and reasoning your way into a box. “The buybull cannot be wrong” therefore whatever absurdities it promotes have to be explainable to modern ears, and I’ll do just that! Of course, like most christianist apologetics, it gets denser, more convoluted and increasingly divorced from reality the further they go.
Ad nauseum.

yes, he is so smart……..lol………..with his half of man theory……..wow! what brilliance!

KevinJuly 9, 2013 at 7:40 pm -

Yet another nut-bag to keep us amused on facebook

Michael CJuly 9, 2013 at 8:00 pm -

I don’t feel like a “whole” male. I want to be a real man. I desire to be more manly. I want to be the kind of man that fells trees with a single swing. I want to fight grizzlies in hand-to-hand combat. I wish my chest hair to be thick as a rug and my calves the size of tree trunks. But because I am but half a man, these things cannot be attained. Perhaps if I wiggle around naked with another man, two of us together will equal the kind of man I cannot be alone. I am a homosexual.

—–

I don’t feel girly enough. I tire of being so damned masculine. I abhor my lack of femininity. Sometimes I wish that my undies had a lacy edging. I wish I could twitter like a bird when I find something funny. I desire clean shaven legs and finely tweezed eyebrows. Because I’m so hopelessly manly, I can never, on my own, have these things. Perhaps if I wiggle around naked with a woman, I will feel more complete. I am a heterosexual.

Is this the “logic” you’re going for, Gagnon?

Ben in OaklandJuly 9, 2013 at 8:02 pm -

I don’t know what Robert’s been gagn’ on, but it must be some pretty powerful hooch, lemme tellya.

“You unite sexually with the one you perceive to be your sexual counterpart, your sexual other half,” First problem is making an assertion and assuming it to be true. The second problem is assuming that it actually means something, and isn’t some words strung together that sound like they ought to mean something, but don’t. People unite sexually for all kinds of reasons– sometimes lust, sometimes love, and some times other reasons entirely. But I doubt anyone thinks of it in terms of sexual other half, but as the person they are attracted to, and depending on whether they are hetero or homo, the gender. “He (or she) completes me” is something I have heard often, but that is simply an expression of personality and life, not an expression of gender and self image.

“If you’re a man and unite sexually with another male, you’re basically making a statement that you believe your maleness is only half intact, needing to be supplemented by a sexual union with another man in order to make you a whole male.”

Let’s just rephrase this, shall we? ““If you’re a man and unite sexually with a woman, you’re basically making a statement that you believe your maleness is only half intact, needing to be supplemented by a sexual union with a not-a-man in order to make you a whole male.”

Stoopid, I know. Either statement doesn’t make much sense.

Masculinity for Gagnon is defined solely by the sexual act, and it must be with a woman because otherwise you’re not a man. Getting stoopider.

But of course, he only sees these things in terms of lack. I’ve often said that I’m not gay because I have sex with men– well, a man, seeing as I’m married and all– I have sex with men because I’m gay. I don’t see myself as lacking masculinity. I see myself as quite masculine, and see my husband the same way. I like masculinity.

Think of it like money. I like chocolate and fois gras as well. Some is nice, more is nicer. If I don’t have them, i’m not defining my life as lacking.

Tony TigerusJuly 9, 2013 at 8:08 pm -

For someone who thinks he is so intelligent, he does not have much ability to reason like an intelligent person. The who idea that we have sex with the person we love to “become whole” really is not that bright. It suggest very low reasoning ability.

JoelJuly 9, 2013 at 8:17 pm -

I was never good with fractions. But I think he’s saying if a straight man gets married (and divorced) three times, he becomes 1/3 of a man. Or is he 3 times the man he was? See, fractions are tough.

CarlJuly 9, 2013 at 8:33 pm -

I wonder how he explains bisexuals then, if I’m dating a guy I’m only half a man, but if that relationship ends and I date a woman I suddenly become all a man. Buuuuuuuuuuuut, what happens if THAT relationship ends and I date a guy again, do I go back to being ‘half a man’? Inquiring minds want to know…

RickJuly 9, 2013 at 9:22 pm -

This is one of the funniest articles and comment threads I’ve read in a long time. Thank you, all, for the excellent and pointed humor. I’m glad to see that Robert Gagnon is finally getting the attention he deserves. He’s been duping evangelicals too lazy to think for themselves for too long.

ChristopherJuly 9, 2013 at 9:34 pm -

Thank god I watched that clip, I had no idea! Now I know, thanks to this expert on half man half woman, whole man whole woman, united whole man and whole woman! (Wait, did I get that right)?

MichaelJuly 9, 2013 at 10:05 pm -

He’s up to his ear lobes in the sin of pride. Perhaps those of us who think pride is a sin can vote on his right to marry?

LaineJuly 10, 2013 at 5:42 am -

Of course the fundies consider him an intellectual giant. After all, in the land of the blind, a one-eyed man is king, right? Besides, in their world, if you talk the most and/or the loudest, you MUST be right. He’s just trying to be the big fish in that tiny bowl. Not hard when you’re in there all alone.

AllanJuly 10, 2013 at 7:09 am -

I have had quite a few gay friends over the years, and can confidently claim that the majority were twice the man this clown is, not half. Then again, my 3-year-old son is twice the man he is.

DaveTheWaveJuly 10, 2013 at 10:15 am -

“You unite sexually with the one you perceive to be your sexual counterpart, your sexual other half…blah blah”

Hmm. Jeesh, all these years I thought I was uniting sexually with others because I was horny. Who knew there was so much philosophy behind it.

WilliamJuly 10, 2013 at 11:19 am -

Just as Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme made the momentous discovery that he had been speaking prose for years without knowing it, so, if Gagnon is to be believed, I have been making these bizarre commentaries and statements without knowing it, and so has my partner. As a Cockney might say, “Would you Adam and Eve it?”

If Gagnon finds that weird fantasies about sexual halves and wholes (which appear to be derived from Plato’s Symposium) help to make him extra-horny when he’s getting it on with his wife, then that’s fine – no skin off my nose – but I really think that he should keep them to himself: the rest of us can do very nicely without them, thank you.

WilliamJuly 10, 2013 at 11:42 am -

Just as Molière’s bourgeois gentilhomme made the momentous discovery that he had been speaking prose for years without knowing it, so, if Gagnon is to be believed, I have been making these bizarre commentaries and statements without knowing it, and so has my boyfriend. As a Cockney might say, “Would you Adam and Eve it?”

If Gagnon finds that weird fantasies about sexual halves and wholes (which appear to be derived from Plato’s Symposium) help to make him extra-horny when he’s getting it on with his wife, then that’s fine – no skin off my nose – but I really think that he should keep them to himself: the rest of us can do very nicely without them, thank you.

WilliamJuly 10, 2013 at 11:45 am -

Sorry about the double post: I though that it had got accidentally deleted the first time, and now find that it hadn’t.

CPT_DoomJuly 10, 2013 at 12:47 pm -

I suggest Gagnon make plans to head to Sydney, Australia in 2014 for the Bingham Cup – the World Cup of gay rugby (named after one of the heroes of United 93). Tell all those rugby players about how they’re all half-men because they’re gay and then participate in a scrimmage with them. You might be surprised.

Priya LynnJuly 10, 2013 at 1:14 pm -

“You unite sexually with the one you perceive to be your sexual counterpart, your sexual other half, if you’re a man and unite sexually with another male, you’re basically making a statement that you believe your maleness is only half intact, needing to be supplemented by a sexual union with another man in order to make you a whole male.”.

So then it necessarily follows that if you’re a man and unite sexually with a woman you’re basically making the statement that you believe your personhood is only half intact, needing to be supplemented by a sexual union with a woman in order to make you a half man/half woman person.

AfricanAmerican912July 13, 2013 at 6:34 am -

Precisely. The poor man has failed to see that he is inadvertently insulting Christ who Himself remained celibate all his life as did St. Paul.

GianniJuly 10, 2013 at 1:16 pm -

I like the way he discusses the logic of it: a man seeking the other half of his maleness/a woman seeking the other half of her femaleness. When it comes to sexual orientation, this is logic? To whom? Oh, yes, the dummies who never question their so-called “experts” on being gay (though they are not gay themselves). If their loyal followers had half the brains they think they have, none of this nonsense would stand a snowball’s chance in hell of surviving to be repeated.

Regan DuCasseJuly 10, 2013 at 2:38 pm -

I’m so over these sophist blatherers like Gagnon. In so many ways he’s a misogynist relying on such rigid, narrow and stereotypical definitions of males and females.
They idealize a natural, normal and morally perfect relationship between men and women, without explaining the violence against females and the gender variant and that in the most fundamentally religious communities, women are objectified much the same as they are in pornography.
The Bible is full of violence and subjugation of women. AND blaming females as the weaker ones incapable of fending off the things that unleashed trouble on the world.
Try to talk to any of them about the violence in our society that’s more acceptable, than casual affection between op sex couples and you get ignored.
These are people who insist they know The Truth, and have all the answers about morality and who deserves privilege all sown up.
The more there is to learn, the more pompous and less factual and accessible they become.

Ben in OaklandJuly 13, 2013 at 12:54 pm -

Hey Regan, I tried to work the misogyny aspect into my post above, but was too tired to do it properly. You finished it forme.

BradJuly 10, 2013 at 3:18 pm -

so, by his logic, all straight men want to be women? is that correct? I’m not as smart as this genius, so I have to ask for clarification.

(lower case) emmaJuly 15, 2013 at 8:08 pm -

Does anyoe else remember that repressed “sex therapist that Andrea Martin played on SCTV? this guy reminds me an awful lot of a gay version of her.

JessicaJuly 16, 2013 at 4:33 pm -

The most upsetting thing is, loser like Gagnon (oo-er, missus!) come out with the most reason free, illogical, unhealthy stream of made up unreality and LGBT are forced to defend themselves by using reason and logic.
Look at this comments sections. Men who are gay reasonably defending themselves against this load of drivel.
This only legitimises Gagnon and the other anti’s nonsense.
Best thing to do; treat them like a confused old man in a care home shouting at the TV; ‘ooh, look at him, there! He’s got long hair! He’s a poof! Pooves are taking the world over’!
That is, treat him gently, kindly, but do not respond by trying to argue against him or reason with him because it only makes him more upset and brings you down to his level.

DanielJuly 16, 2013 at 5:05 pm -

Your comment is very strange. You might have a point about implying that he’s effeminate–but the idea that arguing against him is a mistake is just weird. If you don’t argue against lies they stand and people start to believe they are true.

jdhJuly 22, 2013 at 1:23 pm -

So if gays are half man, then they must be half something else. In Christianist land the only other sex is female. So gays are half male and half female. You get two of tyem together and you have one full man and one full woman! Just like straight marriage!

Since Gagnon’s logic is irrefutable and I just bludgeoned him with it, I expect him to join our side. I just proved that gays are complementary and Biblically complete through marriage. /bow

GewJuly 22, 2013 at 2:10 pm -

I do not need “other” to be complete. I am complete in myself. I SHARE myself with “other” but am not completed by them.

MickeyJuly 24, 2013 at 6:41 pm -

Taking one half of a moron (him) and adding it to another half of a moron (Linda Harvey) you get to see what a REAL moron looks like. Two peas in a pod.

john metzlerJuly 24, 2013 at 7:59 pm -

if male + male = 1/2 male does male + female = 1/4 male ?

CharlieJuly 25, 2013 at 8:18 pm -

Very cute. I like them cute and stupid. Not really, but if he would shut up he could be hot. Is he just trying to rationalize this for himself?

SteveJuly 31, 2013 at 3:02 am -

From the publishing of his first book on sexuality – intelligent scholars were floored that Gagnon could have made it through Harvard – not because he’s a conservative. There are many conservatives at Harvard. The shock was that someone whose first major book lacked both substance and coherence could have made it through Harvard. Theologian and Scholar Walter Wink, reviewed the book and mocked it! (the only time I saw him do that in any review!) This “half-man” nonsense in the above article exemplifies Gagnon’s lack of logic.
There is a market for his claptrap among evangelicals who want one Ivy League scholar, willing to say that the Bible is an anti-gay document or that those 6 texts really have anything to do with homosexuality. More and more evangelicals are admitting how wrong they have been about homosexuality. The diehards who can’t admit they could have been wrong (about this or anything else) can’t stand for the proven science or the scholarly assertions that the bible says little or nothing about homosexuality to be heard. They need Gagnon, the Harvard man who supports their position. And God knows Gagnon needs that following to support his enormous ego. I pray for those who are injured by his work – even as I continue to tell the truth about Scripture and science as best as I’m able. When the Emperor Rob Gagnon discovers he has no clothes, and all that pride falls away, I fear he will dissolve before he has time to repent of this wicked sin of pride that prevented him from acknowledging the truth that God has created us in a variety of sexual orientations and called us all to discover who we are and to become the best examples of our sexual expression that we can be. The blood of many innocents will be on his head. Lord, have mercy.

H.C.August 2, 2013 at 10:27 pm -

By the way, this guy is going to appear tomorrow on a live podcast talking about homosexuality. You can ask him questions here:

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